Conflicts of Interest

While on the topic of ex parte communications, it's a good time to mention a very special ex parte communications provision, Miami-Dade County's renowned "code of silence" provision. It's also a good time because, according to an article in the Miami Herald, the provision was reconsidered earlier t…

One way to deal with possible conflicts is to nip them in the bud by not allowing any personal communications between officials and interested parties ("ex parte communications"). All communications must be official, either documentary or at formal meetings or negotiations. According to an article …

What stronger personal interest is there than family relationships? And yet so many people don't get the problems nepotism in government poses, at least until it takes a chunk out of their wallets. Take an article in today's New York Times Week in Review section. In looking at the stew going on ove…

I've written a few times about the ways local government officials misuse charitable organizations (1, 2, 3, 4, 5). But there are still charities-related issues I've missed. At a session at the recent Council on Governmental Ethics Laws (COGEL) conference on loopholes in and end runs around campaig…

There are two principal ways of dealing with gifts to government officials and employees, and both of them are unsatisfactory, although certainly better than ignoring them completely. One approach is prohibition, the other disclosure. Prohibition makes it clear that it is wrong for government offic…

In Saybrook, IL, two members of both a sportman's club and a village board of trustees resigned their sportman's club membership so they would have no conflict voting on annexation of the club by the village. According to a letter to the editor of the Bloomington Pantagraph, the two members reserve…

Gift disclosure and limitations are an important part of government ethics. But rarely do we think of what gifts mean. Usually this goes little further than politicians saying, "I can't be bought." But gifts aren't about buying. In fact, gifts are the opposite of buying, according to Lewis Hyde in …

Most ethics codes effectively define a conflict of interest as a conflict between an official's personal financial interest and an official's obligation to the public interest. But this leaves out an enormous number of personal interests, many of which are themselves financial, including the financ…

Last month, I wrote about the conflict of interest that led credit agencies to ignore the risk inherent in mortgage-backed securities. A front-page article in today's New York Times shows how a different sort of conflict of interest at Citigroup allowed the risks involved in these securities to be …

A controversy currently going on in Fairfield, CT reminded me that one of the more easily misunderstood provisions of an ethics code is the special consideration, preferential treatment, or favoritism provision. The version in the City Ethics Model Code reads as follows: An official or employee may…